Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing is a sometimes lawyer who often works for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and deals with civil liberties in digital spheres. You may remember him as the author of this summer's smash-hit "DRM Talk," given by Cory to some programmers at Microsoft.

Boing Boing produced some fascinating -- and terrifying -- examples of Your Rights Being Infringed over the weekend. In this first example, a man is taking photographs in a MUNI station in San Francisco (I assume this is a bus or train station) and some police come over and ask him to stop. He asks them to tell him where in the law it says that he can't take photographs. They admit that there is no such law, but they ask him to please stop, anyway, in the name of "security." This first example relies on people not knowing what their rights are.

In this second example, a Boing Boing reader is in Manila, Philippines, where it is state policy to use "searching for bombs" on trains and buses as an excuse to confiscate any home-created optical media. The CDs and DVDs you burned at home -- even if technically legal, even if for work or fair use -- taken! All in the name of preventing IP theft. Fortunately, Manila is not the U.S., but if MPAA and RIAA have their way, it may be, soon.